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Eddie Hill

Hill attended his first boat drag racing event in 1974 at Austin, Texas. He thought the drivers were "crazy" after he saw a driver being thrown from his boat during a crash. Less than a month later, Hill had stopped motorcycle racing to drag race boats, despite not being able to swim.[3] "Once I hit the water with the boat, I never went back to motorcycles," Hill recalled. "The power, speed, and acceleration were all things that I had missed since I quit drag racing."[6] He began racing in a non-blown hydroplane, winning in his first event. In his third race he set the class top speed.[6] In 1975, he set the Southern Drag Boat Association (SDBA) speed record at 137.46 mph (221.22 km/h).[6] In 1976, he switched to nitromethane fuel and set the SDBA record with a 171.81 mph (276.50 km/h) run. He was the SDBA top pointgetter and won the National Drag Boat Association (NDBA) World Fuel & Gas championship.[6] He repeated as champion in both series in 1977, setting the NDBA record with a 170.45 mph (274.31 km/h) run.
Boat that Hill drove to 229 miles per hour, on display at Eddie Hill's Fun Cycles

Hill raced an all white blown-fuel hydroplane from 1978 to 1984. He won 55 of 103 races during that time.[6] Hill captured four American Drag Boat Association (ADBA) championships and was the SDBA top points earner in five consecutive years.[6] In 1982, his Top Fuel hydroplane went 229.00 mph (368.54 km/h) at an NDBA event to set the world's record for a quarter mile water drag at Chowchilla, California.[1] It was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, and it was not broken for 10 years.[6] Hill also set speed records that year in the SDBA (220.76 mph), ADBA (215.82 mph), and International Hot Boat Association (IHBA) (212.78 mph).[6] He became the only racer to hold records in all four associations simultaneously.[6] He won the NDBA Nationals four times including three straight from 1982 until 1984. In 1983 and 1984, Hill won the World Series of Drag Boat Racing championship.[6] The series features two races in each of the four major drag boat racing sanctioning bodies.[6] He won 17 races between 1983 and 1984, and made 29 of 34 final rounds.[6] Before he quit boat drag racing, he had an elapsed time of 5.16 seconds in the wet quarter mile at Firebird Lake in Chandler, Arizona.[6] The e.t. was quicker than Gary Beck's 5.39-second NHRA Top Fuel dragster record, the first time that the water record was lower than the land record.[6][10] Hill quit boat racing in October 1984 after a crash at 217 miles per hour.[6] "It was a perfect run," Hill recalled. "I started to settle the boat back into the water, and then it took off." His Texas A&M ring was torn off his hand; he suffered seven broken bones, a concussion, & eye injuries. He spent five days in the hospital and was not fully recovered for a year.